cookie expire

[michelledebeer]

1.
First of all, is the date format for the cookies exiration always in this format "Wed, 28-Apr-2004 12:00:34 GMT ", or can it be in another form, say "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss"?

2.
Second, can there be anything else than GMT at the end of the date string?

3.
And last, is there a function for converting the cookie-expiration time to any format of my choosing?

Any thoughts?
// Michelle

[laserlight]

Actually, using setcookie(), the date of expiration is a Unix timestamp.

[michelledebeer]

Is this true in every case, or just in the way PHP sets its cookies?

What I mean is, can you set the "expires" part of the cookie in any
format you like, and still work?

like this:
// The way PHP prints it:
header("Set-Cookie: TestCookie=test; expires=Wed, 28-Apr-2004 12:00:34 GMT");

// Can you set a valid cookie this way?
header("Set-Cookie: TestCookie=test; expires=2004-04-28 12:00:34 GMT");

[laserlight]

You could read [url=ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2965.txt]RFC 2965[/url]

It seems to indicate that the expire ("Max-Age") should be in seconds.